Spring break escapades

Spring break has officially been over for a week and things are back in full swing in Beijing again! I had an excellent spring break with my parents in Yunnan, a province in southern China known for having many Chinese minority groups. In one week, we visited Kunming, Lijiang, and Dali, which are all cities in the area. Our trip started on Sunday, when we flew from Beijing to Kunming. Our first stop was at a park with a famous building that I forgot the name of (sorry Mom). Anyways, those of you who are familiar with Chinese architecture know that most historical Chinese buildings have "duilians", which are inscription panels on each side of the doorway. This building had especially interesting duilians with famous Chinese poems narrating Yunnan's military history on either side.


The park also was on the border of "Dian Chi", which is a famous pond in Chinese history. Hearing the tour guide talk about this pond reminded me of Thoreau's Walden Pond with its ice cracking (nerdy moment of the day). Anyways this pond seemed pretty from the park but it turns out that it's actually the sewage disposal site for all the toilets in Kunming, so my mom and I decided to nickname it "Grey Poupon" (aka Gray Poo Pond).


For dinner we had Yunnan mushroom hot pot, since Yunnan is especially well known for its large variety of mushrooms. Delicious!


That night we watched a show with traditional songs and dances of many of the minority groups in Yunnan. I decided to take a picture of the Hmong performance just for my Hmong friends at Brown :)


The next day we visited Jiuxiang, which is an area with amazing caves and also a really pretty river. To get to the caves, we had to take an elevator down a cliff, row a boat across the river, and then hike through the caves. There was a waterfall inside the cave which was quite breathtaking.


The cave experience finished off with a cable car ride across the mountain back to our starting point. It felt like sitting on a ski lift chair, except without snow or skis on our feet.


On Tuesday we visited the Kunming Stone Forest (Shi Lin). This forest is famous because it tells the story of a Chinese princess named "A Shi Ma" who waited for eternity by a river to be rescued by her lover "A Hei". Because A Hei was held back by a war (?) he was unable to go rescue A Shi Ma and she is therefore now a rock by the lake at Shi Lin. In Yunnan, many of the locals refer to all young men as "A Heis" and the ladies as "A Shi Mas".


After Shi Lin we went to a teahouse to try Puer tea, which is a famous and expensive tea that is local to Yunnan. Puer tea is supposedly good for health, and we tried different types that lowered blood sugar and cholesterol. Surprisingly they all tasted very good, except that they were supposedly of "emperor quality" and therefore much too expensive to buy.


That afternoon we flew to Lijiang, which is a city much less industrial than Kunming and full of fresh air. Lijiang's most prevalent minority is the Dongba tribe, which has their own pictorial form of written Chinese. At night we went walking around their ancient city and had our Dongba names written out for us on a calendar made of their traditional paper.


On Wednesday we drove 3 hours up the mountain to the Tiger Leaping Gorge (Hu Tiao Xia), which is a canyon area of the Yangtze River. The gorge is famous for a stone in the middle of the river, and we hiked to this area of the canyon. The hike was absolutely beautiful, but security guards in the park kept yelling at us to stay on the side of the trail farther from the river, for fear that there would be an avalanche and our heads would be smashed by rocks falling from the surrounding cliffs. Nevertheless, the scenery was breathtaking!


Thursday morning we visited the "Mini Forbidden City" in Lijiang where the ancient ruler of southern China used to live. Inside the palace, they had some ancient paddles they used to spank bad royal children. Of course, my mom and I got a kick out of this.


Afterward we climbed up a tower in the ancient city, and at the top we had a bird's eye view of most of Lijiang. In the background of this picture you can see Yulong Mountain, which is the famous mountain in Lijiang that has snow year round.


That same afternoon we drove to Dali, a city in Yunnan close to the Himalayas. On the way, we passed by a marble factory where they had very interesting marble artwork that looked more like Chinese painting than natural marble.


We then took a boat cruise on a lake at the foot of the Himalayas. Our boat guides were local Dali farmers with some very cute kids. As always, the scenery on the cruise was beautiful.


At night we had dinner at "Yangren Jie", or white man's street, which is filled with foreign food and many tourists. I had my first plate of spaghetti since getting to China - delicious! I had a picture of the street, but unfortunately it didn't load properly.

The next day we went back to Kunming and went hiking again on some nearby mountains. There was some Taoist influence on the structure of the trail but I don't remember what it was. Regardless, we got to see Grey Poupon from another angle and were able to see just how large and significant it is to Kunming.


This mountain was also the site of the grave for Ni Er, the composer for China's current national anthem, the Red Flag Ode. I was especially excited because we played the Red Flag Ode on our orchestra tour in China last winter.


The next day, we woke up bright and early and flew back to Beijing. Overall, it was a very fun week and a good chance to see a different part of China and get out of the Beijing pollution. It was also interesting to hear all the different minority dialects when walking around Yunnan, and to hear Mandarin spoken with a completely different accent. Now it is back to the daily grind of Chinese classes at CET, hard to believe there's only 1 1/2 more months until I leave China!